deracinate

(di-RAS-uh-nayt) verb tr.

1. To uproot.
2. To displace someone or something from a native culture or environment.

[From French deraciner, from de- + racine (root), from Late Latin radicina,
from Latin radix (root), ultimately from Indo-European root wrad (root)
which is also the source of words, such as root, wort, licorice, radical,
radish, rutabaga, eradicate, and ramify.]

"There is an acute paradox here: the well-meaning China hands award the
Olympics to Beijing; that empowers the government to deracinate the wild
grass growing around its feet."
Bruce Gilley; Books of the Times; The New York Times; May 19, 2004.

"'We lived in a an apartment that was part of a series of 1950s housing
projects, and every floor was inhabited by a family that came from a
different country. There was a sense of all these deracinated identities
that were unrelated to one another or to the environment they lived in,
all of them engaged in continuing some kind of dialogue with their
countries of origin,' she told me when we first met."
Talya Halkin; Domestic Nightmare; Jerusalem Post (Israel); Feb 26, 2004.

This week's theme: verbs.

X-Bonus

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands
and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his
brain and his heart is an artist. -Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994)

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